“Not really, Lou,” I say, shaking my head. “But what choice do I have?”
“I’m so sorry. I know how much you loved him. He was so proud of you. You and Tony were all he ever talked about. The men you are. You know he never cared if you were successful or anything. He just wanted you to be good people. Honest. Kind. There for your family. That was my guy.”
There is nowhere to put the grief and no way to make sense of it and nothing to do but hold on to each other trying not to be alone with it.
After a week Lizette and I pack up our things to go home. We never discussed coming and never discuss leaving. It just felt like the right time. Bonnie squeezes each of us as we walk out the front door when something occurs to her. She gives me a look.
“What is it, Lou?”
“Holy shit. We sat shivah.” We both laugh and I feel so proud to be her son, to be Jew-ish, to be part of this family of people who found each other after losing so much.
* * *
WAKING UP ON my birthday a few days after his funeral, I realize I have an appointment to retrieve his ashes. The funeral was a blur. I thought it would be hard but it wasn’t. It was comforting. Jake flew in from Nebraska. Drew sat right next to me as we ate food and told stories about the ranch where my uncle still lives. All my old friends came: Eddie and Ryan, Stephen Perkins, Tim, Gabe and Pete. They just sat by me like old friends do and it occurred to me how much these friendships are a gift.
So many people talked about how warm my dad was. There were kids from the street in Westchester who’d grown up at the house after school while my dad helped them with their homework or brought them an ice cream drumstick from the fridge. They’re teenagers now, weeping at losing a man they also thought of like a father. It surprised even me to see how beloved he was. It seemed like a fitting occasion for a man who was never honored at a luncheon, never received an award or commendation, never even had a proper wedding. I can’t help but think that the people we celebrate publicly and the ones we secretly love the most are rarely the same.
I get dressed and drive to an anonymous storefront in Eagle Rock. There’s a wall of urns, each with a yellow Post-it note on which is written a name and a number. I see the tall marbled green urn with the name “Jim Jollett” written beneath it. I walk out to the curb with the urn under my arm, open the door and strap him into the front seat of the black ’66 Chevy Chevelle we restored together.
Okay, Dad, where do you want to go?
I turn on his favorite song. “The Pretender” by Jackson Browne.
I’m gonna rent myself a house in the shade of the freeway.
We get on the freeway. You all right in there? I can hear him in my head. I don’t know how anybody handles anything. There’s no container for the thing he was now that he’s gone. It’s an irrational number. Infinity divided by zero. That’s probably why we put people in containers when they die: coffins, urns, mausoleums—to give a physical shape to the absence.
I stare out at the cars all around me trying to figure out where to go. I have no plan. Maybe Vegas. He loved Vegas. Will people stare as I walk from the casino to the sports book holding a marbled green urn under my arm? My dad died and it’s my birthday and nobody can say anything because I’m allowed to lose my shit. Could we shoot craps together, the urn and I? Or play blackjack? Could we sit in a diner and order breakfast? I’ll have the waffles. The urn would like a pastrami sandwich and a chocolate malted milkshake. Could we trouble you for a long straw?
The 210 is a bullshit freeway. There are so many of them in Los Angeles. In all the places beyond downtown and the beach, Hollywood, Disneyland, there are all these forgotten people who grew up and died fixing cars, cleaning motel rooms, bobbing in the waves in the water next to the factories with their sons on beaches where no tourists venture. You can see them there in the background. They make up the scenery, the negative space in a photograph snapped by some tourist and dropped in a drawer.
A sign ahead reads, “Santa Anita Park.” Of course. Why didn’t I think of this before? I follow the exit to Foothill Boulevard, down the winding road under the canopy of tall trees. I park the Chevelle in a faraway corner of the enormous concrete lot. I unstrap the urn from the passenger seat and open the lid. There is a heavy plastic bag inside that holds his ashes, a metal dog tag clipped to the top. Hey, Dad. I pull the bag out and hold it in my hand to feel the weight.
I cut it open with a pocketknife and pour the ashes into the urn, making sure to leave some in the plastic bag. The car fills with a cloud of dust. It gets in my eyes, my nose, my lungs, the upholstery. Goddamn it, Dad! I laugh as I wipe the ashes from my T-shirt and black jeans.
I get out of the car and put the plastic bag containing my father’s ashes in the small of my back, exactly like the drug smuggler he once was. I hear the bugle playing in the distance, the familiar, earthy smell of manure and dirt, the hot concrete breathing beneath my feet. I put my sunglasses on and walk toward the gate.
Dad. Da. Pop. Poppy.
I buy a ticket and a racing form, making my way to a spot high in the stands. Palm trees dot the infield, an enormous jumbotron hangs over the finish line showing the results from Del Mar and Belmont, the odds for the lineup in the first race. I walk through the crowd and hear the voices: “Shit, man, everybody bettin’ four. But I’m telling you he ain’t got no legs for it. The whole field gonna run out fast and take away his legs.” The men and their dreams.
I go to the concession and buy a corned beef sandwich, a large Sprite and a Carnation chocolate malted ice cream. Our food. I place a bet and head for the stands. I got Papa Turf in the fifth for a hundred to win, Dad. I boxed the exacta with Surfing Angel because it sounds like something from a movie.
I eat the food and study the races. The way the men watch the horses on the final straightaway, the moment of high hopes and broken dreams. I notice the four towers, one on each corner rising up a hundred feet above, where security watches the track. There are cameras and people who are paid to make sure nobody interferes with the race. Am I willing to go to jail today? What would a gambling control commission say about bringing human remains to a racetrack?
I go into the bathroom and empty the paper soda cup into a sink. I wash it clean and dry it with paper towels. I head into a stall and remove the plastic bag filled with ashes from the small of my back. I pour them into the cup and walk out, holding it like a soft drink I’m saving for later. There is something ancient about it, an element of sacrifice, a medieval sense of ritual: I am Mikel of the House of Jollett, I hereby commit my father to this track in the city of Santa Anita, sanctified in warm horsey blood.
I walk down to the track with my heart pounding, trying to look casual, aiming for a spot at the start of the final straightaway, a place behind a concrete archway, hidden from the view of the giant towers, a place no one will look after the race passes, after the howls, the rise of the crowd, and the pack galloping toward the finish line, after the green tractors that follow have dampened the dust behind them. I time my walk with the beginning of the race when I hear the starting bell.
“And away they go!”
Okay, Dad. It’s just you and me. This is so fucked-up, right?
“And it’s Crimson Giant starting off strong followed by Rocket Heat.”
Fifty feet to the spot. Wait for them. Wait for them.
“And here comes Papa Turf making a move on the outside. They’re heading into the turn.”
Twenty feet. Breathe. Ten feet. You can do this. Five feet.
“Rocket Heat lunges ahead of the pack.”
The horses pass right in front of me, all straining muscles and foaming mouths, the small men bent forward, whipping them faster into the Future. I hear the crowd come to life as the people get up to root them home.
I approach the white railing at the edge of the track and fling my father’s ashes into the air.
I watch the cloud of dust form, suspended momentarily in a small burst before gently falling to the g
round.
There are no witnesses, no brass army band, no twenty-one-gun salute, no headline, just me and Dad, some ash and a used-up old paper cup. It’s better this way. Lose the pomp and circumstance and focus on what’s real. Dad would appreciate that. Dirt. Ash. Sun. Wind. The soughing of the tractors and the ghosts rising in the stands.
CHAPTER 46
SALEM, OREGON
The house on Breys Avenue is smaller than I remember it. There is still the gravel driveway, the porch where we kept our bikes, the brick chimney where Paul practiced his sweeping. We flew up from Los Angeles to Portland and drove south down I-5 to stand in this spot. Tony’s son lives here in Salem now, with his girlfriend and his daughter. Tony never said it, but I know we’re here because he wants to make amends. Or start to. I know it’s not easy for him, even though the trip was his idea, which is why he asked me to come along. He’s trying. I love him for that.
We probably look strange. Two grown men leaning shoulder to shoulder against a small rental car staring at a house.
“Should we knock on the door or something?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe we should just stand here a minute.”
“Weird, right?”
“So weird. That’s a nicer fence than the one we had, but it looks like they got rid of the vegetable gardens.”
“Good move.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
There’s a silence, the warm sun beating down on our faces, a light breeze shuddering the leaves through the trees.
“I keep going over it and over it,” I say. “And I don’t think I have a single good memory in that house. Like I know we must’ve had some good times but I can’t think of any right now.”
He shakes his head. “Me neither.”
“It’s worse than I thought it would be. I don’t know what I expected.”
“It was a hard place to live.”
He pops a piece of gum in his mouth and checks his phone. “Like a desert.” I know he’s anxious to see his son, that this trip is difficult for him for other reasons. “I’ll get the directions.”
“Hold on. I just have to wrap my head around this.”
“We got time.”
A few days after Dad died, I had to go to Cedars-Sinai to complete the paperwork for his death certificate. It was Mother’s Day and I decided to call Mom. I figured I could, for the first time since I was perhaps seventeen years old, reach out to her for comfort and allow her to be like a balm, that this might be a kind of olive branch, this easy bit of parenting, this basic soothing of a son grieving over the death of his father.
She answered and I could hardly get the words out. The hospital. The death certificate. My father gone. So much pain. I expected her to simply say those simple words, the ones I needed to hear: You are my son and I love you. I’m so sorry this happened.
She said, “It was always so painful to me that you left me to go live with him. I don’t know how you could do that to me.”
I was confused. These two conflicting realities: the mother in my mind, the one I was reaching out to, still hoping she could reach back, and the one on the other end of the line.
“It was always very hard for me that you became close with your father instead of me.”
I felt the numbness wash over me, the blank white nothingness I carried for so long as if I could simply disappear, to evaporate into silent clouds.
I wiped my eyes. “You … what?”
“I know you’re sad your father died, but think of how hard it has been for me to know you were closer with him.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I told her I had to go and hung up the phone.
I remembered Phil Ritter, our roommate from Synanon who was beaten in the driveway by the men from Synanon. He lives near Seattle now. He’d heard about the band and reached out to get in touch with me. I called him one day to catch up. He’s such a kind man, still trying to change the world, focused now on climate change. When we spoke, I asked him about that day in Berkeley and he told me the story from his perspective, how he didn’t remember much except being hit on the head and looking up to see me watching from the porch, how our eyes met and he thought, This is too much for a child Mikel’s age to witness. That’s what he remembers most: the look on my face. I remember his expression among that terrible chaos. It stuck with me. I would see it in my dreams, in the moments after when I would wake up screaming. The screams, the blood, the clubs, and that kind face, full of sorrow.
I tried to work backward from that moment, from the story Mom told me about that day. How she corrected me and told me I wasn’t there. How the reality of it was too much to bear so she simply invented a new one. I never saw a therapist or went to a child counselor. We never talked about it. She ignored the nightmares, my pleas to be acknowledged, as if they simply didn’t exist. In the retelling I heard through the years of that day, she always described it as a terrible thing that happened not to Phil, or me, or Tony, who watched from across the street, but to her.
This happened when Paul died. Or didn’t. It was a type of instruction, to forget, to pick and choose which elements of reality we acknowledged, as if she was trying to teach me her secret way of coping with life. And then on that day I drove down Third Street across Los Angeles to pick up my father’s death certificate, when I was at my most vulnerable, her first thought, her only thought, was of herself.
I know there is a disorder at work. It took time to figure these things out because we simply don’t have a language to talk about them. We talk about schizophrenics and depressives, alcoholics and autistics, but narcissistic personality disorder and the closely related borderline personality disorder—these mental illnesses that create relationships without empathy, without love, filled with delusion and manipulation—they are slippery and ghostlike. They take years to unravel, partly because the person who suffers from them simply doesn’t know he has it.
I could, even at that moment, feel bad for her, for the bad things that happened to her, how scared she must have been, how utterly alone she must’ve been to require this way of coping with a world that was too painful for her to live in, to simply invent another one instead. The crippling depression, the divorces, the cult that left her penniless and without a friend, all of these things only added to the problem. And I can sympathize with her. Even now. That has never been the problem.
So standing there in front of the house in Salem, Oregon, trying to think of one good memory, I see this other moment so clearly instead: driving toward Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles three days after my father died, the light blue sky, the puffy clouds above the trees as I approach mid-city in the black ’66 Chevelle Dad and I restored together, the smell of gasoline in the air from that big engine we dropped in it. Looking up, a hole of confusion and grief torn through my heart where my father was, my mind was racing through memories of Phil, Paul, Doug and Mom as I understood, finally, that she is never going to be the mother I have spent a lifetime hoping she would be and it’s time I just accept it.
Okay.
From the distance that decision created, I’ve found it’s easier to appreciate the things about her that make her unique, to hear an old folk song or some random Dutch phrase in Amsterdam, to find myself saying something about Thatasshole Reagan and remember that if nothing else I was given a thorough political education. I like these things about her. It’s easier to appreciate them at a distance. You can never really hate someone whose pain you know so well.
* * *
THE GARDENS ON the side of the house are gone but the barn Paul built is still standing. I doubt there are any rabbits in it. Tony and I walk around to the alley in the back to check. The chain-link fence has been replaced by a wooden one. The dog run is gone but the tree where we slaughtered rabbits is still standing, naked and leafless in the sun.
I see Paul everywhere. His blue hatchet, the orange maul, the short bearded man in a flannel chopping wood or scooping
feed from a bucket. An internet investigation by Lizette one day revealed that he might have only recently died. It’s not clear. I don’t know why it never occurred to me to find out for myself. Maybe because I figured the mystery had only two possible outcomes and both were terrible. Perhaps he spent all that time on the street, eventually reconnecting with a brother before his death. I hate to think of him being alone. I don’t think he had any other kids and I wish I could’ve told him what he meant to me. That I loved him, that he will always be my family, that his jokes and kindness and attention, the quiet days along the Willamette, how much that affection was like cool water in a dry, parched desert. That I didn’t care that he was broken. Everyone I love is broken. Or was. That’s how we recognize each other.
* * *
MY SON WAS born on a quiet February morning on the third floor of Cedars-Sinai hospital exactly one floor below the room my father died in. He came into the world purple and screaming, his arms small, his fingers tiny, his face swollen. They wiped him down and warmed him up and handed him to his mother, where he nursed, rooted his head into her shoulder and fell asleep.
That night I cradled him in my arms when he woke up while Lizette recovered in the bed thinking, You’ve had the weirdest day, little man. The world seems so impossibly dangerous, so many sharp corners and so many hard places, so many things I must protect him from. I put him down and lay awake listening to his breath, all the little gurgles and sneezes, the steady rhythm of his breathing. The sounds bring such a blinding joy to my chest. What was in these barren corners before you arrived? When we take him home, he fills the quiet hallways of our house with his cries. My eyes linger on those fingers and count his toes. All those years, all those times when I’d see a family at a park or a restaurant, their closeness, their physical proximity to each other, the comforting ease of it, I felt like a stranger looking in from a window. And I wondered if I would ever have these basic things that seem like magic to me now as we lie on the bed and play music, he kicks his feet to “Burning Down the House” by Talking Heads, and we laugh, our arms hanging over the side to scratch the ears of the black Labrador we rescued and named Bowie.
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